Rocky helped me loosen up, and I feel like that night was the night I completely broke out of my shell. The night in the diner was a turning point for me. Just a couple years earlier I had been incredibly introverted, with enough stage fright that I stuttered while giving the shortest of lectures. The response I got was brilliant: "Yeah! My music teacher was there and he said some crazy transvestite was running around, screaming at everyone!"Īlthough that night was particularly extreme, it is the epitome of why I do Rocky. We perform in a college town and I know a couple students, so later in the week I asked if any of them had heard about someone running around the diner that Sunday morning. The manager of the diner loved it and, laughing, actually turned up the music for me. The other diners looked at me blankly, but if any giggled I ran across the diner, leaped up and serenaded them. As "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey came on the jukebox, I found myself not only singing along, but up on my feet and dancing. At the diner after the show I hit that perfect combination of sleep deprivation, exhaustion and adrenaline - something just snapped. The audience loved it and we had a great show. Everyone seemed to agree that my makeup reminded them of Mimi from the Drew Carey Show. A little Asian girl on cast asked to do my Crim makeup, which turned out very different than I had anticipated. After the show people called me "The Jazzercise Frank".Īnother moment that particularly sticks out in my mind is when I played Crim after having been sleep deprived most of the week. This was my first time playing Frank, decked out in an orange zebra print top with pink polka dot bottoms and pink fishnets. We killed our normal lighting set up as many black lights as we could find then switched out the costuming for similarly-shaped costumed in as many crazily UV reactive colors and patterns as possible. For a cast member's final performance before moving away, we set up our first black light night. The most memorable moments of my time on Formal Dress Optional tend to revolve around our theme shows. I even was lucky enough to get some screen time in the scene where Charlie plays Rocky for the first time. I also traveled to Pittsburgh to be an extra at the filming of Perks of Being a Wallflower. I've already got my room booked for RKOCon in Rhode Island. I plan to attend every con I possibly can. Mitchell, Kentucky and the Last Rockycon in Arizona. I've now also been to the Celluloid Jam 2 in Ft. My first convention was 4711 in Atlantic City, and it was a blast! I was thrilled to meet Patricia Quinn and Gary Shail. At the very least we haven't destroyed our cast yet. I'm one of two cast managers, and I think I do a pretty good job. I'm proud to say I was selected for the job, and I still hold it to this day. I eventually stepped up my costuming by Eddie-fying a real leather jacket, and now I've commissioned a fellow cast member to custom make me a base jacket that should look perfectly accurate.Ībout a year after joining FDO, in December 2010, a position in cast management opened up and I decided to go for it. I've since played the majority of the roles at least once or twice, but Eddie is still by far my favourite. I pulled together my first Eddie vest in the three days prior to the show, using a T-Birds jacket from the after-Halloween clearance section of Walmart as my base. I performed for the first time in November 2009. After enduring pressure from the cast all summer I finally put in my application that fall. Inevitably though, I graduated and no longer had an excuse. I resisted for a long time, using college as an excuse, saying that I didn't have time. During that time I made friends with the cast and they wanted me to join. I absolutely loved it and throughout the two years getting my degree I came back as often as I could. So after watching the virgin sacrifice, I finally saw my first showing with cast Formal Dress Optional.
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